this time, with an unusual mix of rough traders, vague officials, packed horses, and armed men we’re joining to head home. The shaded morning mist weights down the weisang that’s lit, white shreds swirl low around our horses’ trampling hoofs. Two red robed men chant their prayers, but their devout voices are lost in the restless roars of our company. We’re leaving Lhasa, and we’re leaving now.
“No mules or pilgrims this time, sister.” Dendup steers his horse beside me.
I don’t mind; I understand. Dendup and Sonam want to get to their families as soon as possible. They’ve got some explaining to do.
We ride out in a single line, and soon find our own pace again. With Sonam in front, me as a second, and Dendup closing our row. It doesn’t take long and my stallion’s at it again, challenging Sonam’s horse for the lead position. I smile, as some things never seem to change.
My thoughts go back to this morning when I woke up in a panic. My body choked, my mind overwhelmed with dread, like in a bad dream. Only it wasn’t a dream, I realized as my fingers touched the empty void in my chest. I’m going home without him and I don’t know how—not yet. But being on the road will help, as its familiar rhythm puts that part of my mind at ease. The other part—the part of him—I’ll have to deal with before I get home.
I look up to the pallid sun, struggling to get over the rusted mountain ridge afar. There’s time. Settling to the back of my saddle and I relax the reins of my horse, scraping gravel, ready to bolt.
“Go on then, tire yourself out.” With a jolt, he balks and takes off in clouds of grit and dust. I let him run, for he’ll calm down by himself and return to the group.
So we travel and they try, Sonam and Dendup. They really do, but there’s nothing that can lift my spirits for now, let alone my sunken heart. Passing through the landscape, set with the markers of him and me, the memories won’t leave me be.
Lake Nam Tso, the cerulean jewel set amongst crystal peaks where he walked out, making his choice so clear; the dusty ruins near Derge where he let me see inside of him and spoke of freedom and longing; the starry night at the mighty Cho La, where he folded my rigid body into the warm, open space of his. Like scavenging ravens, they pick the flesh of my bones until there’s nothing left but my shattered heart, raw and exposed.
At night I hurdle around the fire with Dendup’s cheerful talk and Sonam’s genuine care. We even have a few honest conversations, despite the strong liquor flowing in the men. They make me laugh, sharing their take on women and all. Like how I come from a long line of “feisty” women, as Dendup calls is, with no exception to the rule. And they even share some confessions they—in hindsight—I think never will admit again. Like Sonam’s love for my mother and his cravings to be set alive.
“She was the one for me, Nordun,” he says. He takes a sip of his flask and I drink his words, as I remember so little of my mother. “Stunning, like you, with the most gorgeous smile I’ve ever seen.” The caster stays close to his lips.
“But I was not the one for her. Your father was.” He takes another gulp. A small trickle drips down. “Never regretted letting her go; one cannot keep that’s not meant to be.” He sighs and turns to me, a sad smile hides under his bushy moustache. “You’ll be fine, Nordun, you did the right thing.” I nod, but the tears burning under my eyelids say otherwise.
“You’ll find a good man who’ll make you smile again, like I found my Zinzin.” His hand weights heavy on my forearm, and his words on my mind. I catch his distant gaze and pull it in.
“I know,” he says, and shakes his head. “Sangmo.” His voice trails off. “I’ll try to make amends the best I can.” I squeeze his hand.
“That would be good, to try,” I say, and my thoughts go back to that night before I left, when Sangmo picked my clothes and told me she didn’t want a marriage, only her freedom. “She’s not demanding.” Sonam’s smile turns into a gentle grin.
“Y.” His hands draw over his face. “And I should not have given in to her, but man, how that woman makes me feel alive, and I need that, Nordun, I do, time and time again.” He puffs a deep breath and my cheeks flush at his candid confession. And then he gives me a wink, which makes my face burn even more.
To feel alive by the touch of the other, I know what Sonam means now. It’s in all my senses—he is in all my senses. He awakened me and left me behind, gutted with a harrowing longing for so much more.
Yet, the endless days in the saddle are strangely soothing to my soul. The vast mountains stretching into the endless blue sky, the turning of the leaves from fresh green to the richest red, the sweet smell of ripe berries and dried cut grass, and the billowing clouds carrying the call of the birds above—the wild is so nourishing to all my senses.
But at night my mind turns to him, and the way his hands prepared my body to be his with the most tender of touch. It drowns my very being, sweeping me away with the ravishing desire for what’s never going to be again. And I curl myself into a ball, until the feral yearning that grips me subsides with the arrival of dawn, every darkened night again.
I’ve chosen to survive the only way I know how—I’ve chosen to surrender. To stay present and sit in the eye of this raging storm, for it will pass—it has to. It’s the universal principle of impermanence—everything’s always changing—and it’s settling me amid this emotional chaos.
We always have a choice and I made mine. And as the new day breaks again, I turn to the recognition that I have given it my all for the benefit of all sentient beings, and somehow that’s something beautiful even though I can’t fully comprehend or explain—not yet, but it makes my life all the more richer and larger as a result.
I’ve made the right choice for me.